Like soft laps on a sandy beach, election night began quietly.

7 p.m., CNN analysts are sifting early-reporting in Indiana and Kentucky congressional districts, looking for signs that might foreshadow voting trends. None mentioned that, hours before, the non-voting delegate seat from Guam has peacefully flipped from Red to Blue.

7:30 p.m. The gravitational pull shifts to Florida’s senate and gubernatorial races. MSNow’s Rachel Maddow gushes that Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon was the 2026 candidate she’d most like to have a beer with. Fox panelists sniff that Republicans could actually lose there.

7:35 p.m., the surf is picking up in Ohio and New Hampshire. 8 p.m., attention fixes on Georgia, where Jon Ossoff is already cruising.  In Texas, Talarico is outperforming Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. Talarico’s aide audaciously says it may be an early night.

8:30 p.m., big splash. Heavily favored former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper takes the open Tom Tillis Senate seat. Fox notes that Democrats are running much stronger than pre-election forecasts. Between 9 and 10 p.m, it’s confirmed. Democrats will take back the House, the only unknown – by how much. Some boldly predict winning as many as 235-240 seats. Ohio, Texas and Kansas look promising. Ten p.m. the night’s first shocker. The Senate seat held by Darline Graham goes to Democrat Annie Andrews.

11 p.m., Talarico takes Texas; Sherrod Brown, Ohio; and Adam Hamilton swamps Roger Marshall in Kansas. Kansas of all places! The surges are stronger and stronger. Estimates for House flips rise. At 11:35 CNN announces what a year ago seemed a meteorological impossibility: Democrats have won a majority in the Senate. Fox blames high prices and weak candidates. No one blames Donald Trump – but he blames Fox.

I dozed off around midnight and woke with a start around 2 a.m. to discover that that Democrat Scott Colom was leading Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Senate race in Mississippi by 65 votes.

The talking heads and political consultants confirmed: it was a blue wave, no, a tsunami. It was a sea of blue – but also a red undertow, a self-destructive riptide in Republican circles that made the Democrats’ task easier.

Here are my thoughts, in no particular order.

The golden chutzpah award goes to Donald Trump. He implored his base countless times -reportedly at least 47 times – to close their eyes and pretend he was on the ballot. He acknowledged he was on the ballot. Late Tuesday night, he posted on Truth Social that, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”  Clearly voters did regard him as on the ballot and forcefully repudiated him and his policies.

Schadenfreude. Watching smarmy Vivek Ramaswamy self-immolate in the Ohio governor’s race gave greatest pleasure, enhanced when learning that Amy Acton refused to take his concession call. Runner-up was Ken Paxton’s defeat in Texas. Other candidates for the equal justice awards: three star admiral Nancy Lacore– fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth–– winning a GOP seat in South Carolina. Or Zach Denbo resigning from the Justice Department over White House interference and flipping a seat in Kentucky. Or Montana Forest Service firefighter Sam Forstag’s success after being cut by DOGE. The sweetest here could be Scott Colom’s senate fight in Mississippi. Former president Biden nominated him to be a federal judge in the Northern District of Mississippi, but on his way to possibly defeating Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, who blocked him from having a confirmation hearing. How sweet it may be.

$$$. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, poured $446 million of his own money (half in Texas) into this year’s midterm elections, mostly aimed at preserving the Republican Party’s control of Congress. (In contrast, Donald Trump, according to recent election filings, contributed zero dollars of his own money.) Money can’t buy everything!

DEI. It’s ironic Democrats stayed away from DEI issues during the campaign, but the election produced a series of historic firsts and greater diversity: first black House speaker; first openly gay and first Muslim US senators; 5 black governors; two states with their first Latino governors; first black female governor in the country; Native American women elected senator in Minnesota and governor of New Mexico. As pointed out in Political Wirehttps://politicalwire.com/2026/11/06/a-remarkable-milestone-in-american-politics/, for the first time in the nation’s history, none of the ten most populous states will have a white, non-Hispanic Christian man as governor.

Redistricting. So how’s that working for you, Donald? The President pressured leaders in red states to redraw congressional district lines in mid-decade to favor Republicans. His most promising target was Texas, whose gerrymandering was supposed to yield five additional seats. The effort to flip red failed in four. A Democrat also picked up a seat that was empty, meaning they have one more seat in the Lone Star State than they did before. When California responded by drawing lines to create five district favorable to Democrats, all five flipped to blue. Trump’s strategy was designed to yield 15 Republican seats. He got just three.

DSA. The two current members of the House who are Democratic Socialists (Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashid Tlaib) will be joined by six others (two from New York, one each from Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan and California). We can look at that as a 300 percent increase, or we can say they are just eight out of the 245 to 250 House Democrats and try to understand the energy they are generating in heavily blue districts, especially among younger voters. But that’s a blog for another day, along with answers to the question of Where Do We Go From Here.

There have been several polls over many months measuring unfavorable perceptions of the President’s mental acuity. Twenty-four hours after Tuesday’s election, Fox news poll released a poll confirming that 56 percent of Americans believe he is incompetent to run the government. Finally, an acknowledgment from the Donald Trump official news outlet that the tide has turned. Of course, Trump has two years left, in which he can do a lot of damage domestically and internationally, and the Democrats are still short of a veto-proof majority.

But for now, as the final votes are tallied, we can allow ourselves to be buoyed by the outcome. Not as partisans (I’m one of the plurality of independents.) But as people whose professed values have been violated every day with one Trump outrage after another. Let’s hope that serious minds prevail on both sides of the aisle, and that Donald Trump’s reign of terror is swamped by the enduring wave of history. What a wonderful way to celebrate our democracy’s 250th anniversary.

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